Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The Reasonable Right

While Googling something, I came across this forum exchange at ConservativeHQ.com, from last winter The first poster, Spindizzy, provides a great analysis of the competing agendas of the architects of the Iraq War. To summarize Spindizzy's points:

- neocons/Wolfowitz: build Iraq into a democracy with a market economy, with an overwhelming American troop presence to provide security, a la post-WWII Germany and Japan.

- Dick Cheney: Award Haliburton with contracts. Crony capitalism standing in the way of the neocon dream of free market capitalism.

- Karl Rove: expand Republican power. Staff the Coalition Provisional Authority based on GOP loyalty, not experience or competence. Exploit the war for political purposes back home.

- George W. Bush: prove that he is more of a man than his Daddy. Hence, backing out and admitting defeat is not an option.

Result: Iraq is a mess.

There were a couple of responses in agreement, but we also heard from the "blame media, kill Muslims" crowd accusing Spindizzy of Monday Morning quarterbacking and defeatism. That's the way it goes on the Right. A few of them are very reasonable: far more sensible than the whining mainstream Left and more perhaps more realistic than hard-line non-interventionists (although the latter are more consistent). Yet so many others on the Right are among the most unreasonable and hateful human beings on the planet.

Perhaps we'll see a partisan realignment in which war will be the defining issue, not culture or economic redistribution, where realists and non-interventionists take one side of the aisle and the War Party the other. Perhaps this is developing already.